Instagram in FarmVille: Coming soon to a virtual farm near you

For virtual farmers who have used various screen capturing methods to capture your masterful farmscaping, that's all apparently about to change. Zynga CEO Mark Pincus, speaking at a conference, mentioned that the powers behind FarmVille have "created something like Instagram, where you can take pictures of farms and share them."

"Wait a minute," you may be thinking to yourself. "There's been a picture taking button in FarmVille for ages." And, you're right. But if you head to your farm today and click on the camera icon, you'll get a pop-up that says this feature is 'coming soon.' So maybe with the Instagram reference, the new FarmVille camera will be able to snap screenshots, give the option to apply a funky filter and then enable you to share your handiwork with the world on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or other relevant social media.

To put this FarmVille update into context, this was part of a larger discussion with Pincus and All Things D's Kara Swisher about Zynga innovations. He mentioned this new Instagram-like add-on as one example of the company's innovation, in addition to its analytics system (which the company relies on heavily when making games) and its Zynga's cloud gaming service, called z-Cloud.

Not sure if creating an in-game photo-taking app necessarily fits the bill for innovation (we'll have to reserve further judgement until that feature arrives) though, I can see how the game's 21.7 million players might be interested in such an app. From a consumer standpoint, Zynga has certainly been innovative in changing the entire landscape of gaming, making free-to-play viable in the United States, reaching that much-coveted non-gamer audience like no other company has before and, largely, giving the sequel-driven business of video games a wake-up call that the times they are a-changin'.

> Zynga's Mark Pincus Talks About His Management Style, Acquisitions and Mobile [All Things D]